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Rakin Hamad  00:00

It takes away your ability to continue building wealth as you had. It’s important to make sure you have that floor. To make sure when you you don’t take a step forward, there’s no step back. You

Joey Loss  00:24

Rakin Hamad, thanks for coming on the podcast.

Rakin Hamad  00:26

Thank you for having me.

Joey Loss  00:28

So for listeners who may not know you, can you share a little bit about what you do and how you come to do it.

Rakin Hamad  00:34

Yeah, as Joey said, my name is Rakin. I’m a personal injury attorney here in Alexandria, Virginia. So what I do is I represent people that have been injured due to no fault of their own, and whether they’ve been injured in car accidents, which is the majority of our practice, or, you know, dog bite attacks, or slip and falls, or due to, you know, products malfunctioning or not acting how it should. Once they’re injured and they’re not at fault, that’s we’re not going to step in and help represent people and take their claims against insurance companies and obtain compensation for them to kind of make them whole for what they’ve lost.

Joey Loss  01:12

Yeah, that’s awesome. And I thought this would be such an interesting conversation, because, you know, in the world of financial planning, so many people are focused on the process of accumulating assets. It’s kind of the whole bag is, how do we how do we build wealth? How do we reduce taxes? How do we be smart on things? And an area that I feel like is completely neglected in my field, is protecting what you’ve built. And you know, there are tools for that. Obviously, insurance is a big one, but there’s other things that kind of a small but increasing number of financial planners are focused on, like how to title assets in a way that might add a little bit of protection, what assets should be saved, where? But insurance is one of the big ones, and I think particularly for younger people, we’re looking for the best deal on insurance. And if we think about what it costs for, what it protects, if we get a little bit better coverage, it may not be worth that discount. But I kind of wanted to open it with, you know, what is personal liability? I think that might be a term that eludes people.

Rakin Hamad  02:15

Well, let me kind of explain. You know, in a personal injury case, there’s three legs of the stool, as we say, there’s liability, which means who’s at fault for causing the injury. There’s damages, which are what you’re you know, what the injured parties, you know, damages are their injuries. And then the third stool is insurance coverage. And before I kind of entered this field, I was, you know, just like I think everyone else out there, you know, auto insurance, or insurance in general, is kind of just, you know, an expense that I knew was necessary, but I didn’t really know, you know, why, and I didn’t really know why I should, you know, not just take the cheapest option. I don’t know how many Google searches I had of cheapest auto insurance before I kind of, you know, enter this field, but so, you know, like I said, that third stool is basically it boils down to collectibility, or if you are injured, or if you have injured someone who is ultimately going to make payment to the injured party. And most people don’t have, especially if it’s a, you know, substantial injury or, or, if we’re talking about, like a broken bone, or anything like that, most people aren’t liquid enough or, or have the ability to just pay, you know, the sum of money that the injured party is entitled to. And so that’s what, you know, insurance coverage. That’s when insurance coverage comes in to kind of answer your initial question of, what’s personal liability? You know, liability means that you’re liable for another person’s damages. And you know, in order to attach liability to someone, you have to prove that they were negligent, which means that they acted unreasonably or without, you know, reasonable care. So for example, like I said, most of my cases are, are car crashes and, you know, someone runs a red light, someone runs a stop sign, or or, you know, someone’s looking the other way and crashes into someone. You know, those are kind of the straightforward liability cases. You know, clearly, person A violated the traffic code, or didn’t follow the traffic rules, they did not act reasonably, they’re then liable, and so they’re liable for whoever they injure, whether it’s one person or multiple people, they’re liable for their damages. And you know, every state’s a little different. Here I’m in Virginia, and I practice in DC as well, but in general, what you would be liable for are the full amount of any medical expenses that the injure party needs, any lost wages, and then mental anguish, inconvenience and physical pain, which kind of people know is like pain and suffering. Liability means that you’re on the hook or you’re responsible for for. Providing compensation to those people that you have, you know, injured due to due to your negligence. And so that’s kind of the straightforward, you know, in terms of, like, business owners or businesses stuff like that, you can become, you know, the business can become liable if one of their employees causes a crash. You know, there’s something called vicarious liability, which means if someone’s working to kind of further your business or within the scope of their employment, then the business would, you know, be on the hook for any liability caused by their employer. So, you know, that’s kind of like the service level answer. What is liability? You know, where it can kind of become scary for people. Is if you don’t have enough insurance coverage, and you become, you know, personally liable for whatever damages you have caused, which means, let’s say, for example, you’ve caused, you know, $100,000 injury, and you only have $30,000 in insurance coverage. If the injured party goes forward to court, goes and gets a verdict for 100,000 you would then be personally liable for that, that different, that 70,000 and that is when people can, you know, find ways to collect on your on your personal liability, whether it’s, you know, the most obvious way is, if you you own real estate, or if you own, you know, any kind of substantial asset like that, solely in your name, then they can attach a lien to it. You know, garnishing wages sometimes with it kind of depends on the situation. But so, I know that was a long answer, but that’s kind of what the you know, that’s when you say liability and personal liability, that’s kind of what we’re talking about.

Joey Loss  06:46

That’s a great answer. And yeah, you pointed to a lot of things I would have had as follow up questions. So I appreciate that the things that stood out to me, you know, I think when you mentioned, like a broken arm or something, many listeners have probably had some sort of minor injury like that, and they’re thinking, Oh, well, that’s what? 3000 $4,000 tops for the X rays and the but the part that makes it a lot scarier and is a lot more subjective, is that lost wages and the subjective, you know, pain and suffering piece, am I correct that that’s what makes the number potentially a lot higher than the initial medical

Rakin Hamad  07:20

costs. Well, like in Virginia, and again, every state is kind of different, but like in Virginia, we have anti subrogation laws, which means that, you know, if I injure person A and I injure Person B, and they have the same injury, and they go to the hospital, and one is health insurance and one doesn’t, you know, I should have to pay the same amount whether the other person has health insurance or not. So you know, when you say a broken arm is $3,000 that’s usually after health insurance. And here in Virginia, you’re you’re liable for the full amount of the medical bill. So even if health insurance pays you know X amount, you’re still liable for the total bill. And so I don’t know if you ever look at your EOBs or your explanation of benefits, but what the health insurance pays, and then what you pay is always substantially less than what the medical provider is charging. So first off, medical bills can get very high very quickly when you’re on the hook for the total amount of them again, every hospital visit up here, we’re already talking about, you know, five figures just even if there aren’t any broken bones or anything like that, if there’s a surgery and there’s charges from the facility, the doctor and, you know, the anesthesiologist, we’re already talking About another kind of five figure charge. And so it, you know, those types of expenses add up quickly. And then, you know, you get to kind of the pain and suffering. And those costs can all are kind of determined based off of what your medical bills are. But at the end of the day, you know, those costs can really pile up. As you know, the value of the case could pile up pretty quickly as well. I mean, for example, if you broke your foot and you can’t walk around for a month, if it ever got to a jury, a jury would would assign a lot of value to that. I mean, and if everyone kind of thought, you know, what would that value be? You know, it kind of, it kind of ranges. And then, you know, like, I’m here in Alexandria, which is right outside of DC, and most, you know, just due to the cost of living, a lot of professionals here are already making, you know, over six figures. So you know, any lost wage claim, even if it’s only for a couple weeks, or, you know, a month, those costs can add up as well. So like I said, kind of said at the beginning, if you injure someone, it’s very hard to find someone that has, you know, the liquidity to be like, Okay, here’s, you know, have a sum of money ready to go to pay it off, and so that’s where people can get in trouble, because then, you know, the assets that they have. Are kind of built up. Are potentially, you know, touchable, or can potentially be, you know, gone after yeah,

Joey Loss  10:06

those are great points. I didn’t, I didn’t realize that the insurance company, the auto insurance company, would be on the hook for everything. Yeah?

Rakin Hamad  10:14

And, well, like I said, it depends on the state. But, you know, to me, the rule makes sense. If you injure someone, you injure two people at the same injuries. One has health insurance, one doesn’t. You know you should have to pay the same amount. So that’s kind of the basis of the rule, or the logic behind it.

Joey Loss  10:30

Got it. So, yeah. So it sounds like, you know, I’m just thinking about the financial planning process, and, you know, we don’t build in a random $150,000 sweep of assets, because an accident can happen. You know, we’re thinking about other types of events that can happen, like market declines and things like that, but those aren’t insurable, right? So, yeah, the insurance piece sounds like it’s a very important component. And before we went live here, we were talking about a less obvious piece of that liability coverage, and it’s something you commonly see regarding the uninsured motorist coverage. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Rakin Hamad  11:13

Yeah, so kind of just the broad picture of auto insurance, and most people don’t realize this, but auto insurance will protect you through something called bodily injury coverage, which means if you cause an injury, then you’re protected up to this amount, whatever amount the limits of the of the auto policy are. And you know, again, a lot of people don’t realize that this auto coverage applies in any incident that involves the use of a vehicle. And so you know, there’s some kind of cases where, you know someone’s at their at the at their trunk and emptying their trunk, and then they’re hit, or they’re open the door and hit a cyclist, things like that. So even if you’re a pedestrian and you’re injured or anything like that involving a car, then your auto insurance will still apply. So the there’s a broad scope of auto insurance, so that’s kind of the first thing. And then, as I said, there’s bodily injury coverage, which is what most people think about, and this is okay, I’m gonna, you know, buy insurance to protect myself if I injure someone, and the bodily injury coverage will be how much I’m protected to and I owe anything on top of that. And that’s true. But you know, the people that have the assets, the kind of financial plan and are building up their assets in general, you know, they’re very, you know, careful people, and they usually are not the ones that are acting negligent, just to be frank, you know, with you. So the other thing, when you increase your liability coverage or your bodily injury coverage, you also increase your underinsured motorist coverage. Now here in Virginia, you have to have the same amount the auto insurance, the auto carrier has to offer the same amount of underinsured motorist coverage as they do bodily injury coverage in some states they don’t have to. So that’s the first thing I would ask everyone to do, is check their declarations page on their auto insurance coverage and make sure that their underinsured or uninsured motorist coverage is the same as their bodily injury coverage. And so what uninsured motorist coverage does is it protects you if someone injures you. And this is, you know what we talk about, building assets and things like that. A lot of people will have huge setbacks if someone injures them and they can’t work, you know, for an extended period of time. So they’re not getting those wages. They’re not able to kind of live their life as as they as they had prior, and the expenses in their life are still the same. So they’re kind of, you know, losing, you know, their monthly in and out is, is going down. So that’s the purpose of uninsured motorist coverage. It protects you. If someone injures you, what it does is, let’s say, for example, you know, I’m someone negligently crashes into me, and they only have 30,000 in coverage, and again, I have $100,000 injury my uninsured motorist coverage will pick up that remaining 70,000 assuming I have 100,000 uninsured motorist coverage will pick up that remaining 70,000 to make me whole. And so, you know, at the end of the day, the whole purpose of the civil justice system and then the personal injury field, is to make those that have lost due to no fault of their own whole again. And so having that uninsured motorist coverage will make sure that you have that kind of third stool, a third leg of the stool that we talked about earlier, and have that coverage to be able to have an insurance carrier compensate. You even if the person that was negligent doesn’t have any assets, doesn’t have insurance coverage and whatnot. So to me, that’s the most important part of auto coverage. I mean, every now and then in the cases that we’ll see, you know, we’ll have someone that you know has a lot of assets, and for some reason they don’t have enough insurance coverage, and they injure someone you know substantially, and their assets are on the hook. But far more common is the person that has a lot of assets are injured due to someone, someone else that doesn’t have kind of that wealth built up, and the person that’s injured is left without any recourse because they don’t have that uninsured motorist coverage to compensate them. So that’s what I would ask everyone to check is, you know, first kind of understand that auto insurance does not only protect you if you injure someone, but it protects you if someone else injures you. And then check your declarations page to make sure that your uninsured motorist coverage is the same as your as your bodily injury coverage.

Joey Loss  16:03

In Florida, that uninsured motorist is not required. It’s an option and and Florida is one of the worst states for underinsured uninsured motorists. I mean, it’s just the wild west down here in terms of what’s going on on the roads. And I think it’s one out of four drivers is on uninsured or underinsured, yeah. So that’s a huge exposure. And you think about the situation here, I mean, you have a lot of people who move here towards the end of their life, when theoretically they’re at the top of the bell curve of their wealth situation, and so I can’t really imagine, you know, and you have a lot of elderly drivers. You have tons of people on their phones. That kind of applies everywhere. But it just makes sense to have that coverage because you don’t know what the other person’s situation is or when it’s going to matter. Yeah, absolutely.

Rakin Hamad  16:48

And when you think of it as adding that coverage, the monthly expense or the premium is going to be, it’s going to be a small amount compared to what you’re saving yourself, you know, in the long run, in terms of making sure that you’re compensated properly, and have kind of that, that full ability to be compensated properly. And it may, if you just think about it like, why would you pay, you know, every month to make sure that someone you injure would be compensated, but you’re not going to make sure that if someone injures you, you have enough coverage for yourself, right? Like that doesn’t make sense. So that’s the first thing I’ll tell you. Every client that comes in, we kind of talk with them, we look at their declaration page and we explain what the coverage is. Because to be honest with you, even insurance brokers don’t always kind of fully understand, you know, what the insurance coverage does. And so, you know, in Florida, Florida is one of those states that doesn’t require it. I would say everyone needs to look and make sure they add it and at least get a quote. And I think you’ll be surprised that the monthly increases is not that much. And then the other thing is, and you know, as you said, in Florida, kind of people move down there. Sometimes they have summer homes or different properties. Once you have multiple properties, a lot of people will look into what’s called umbrella coverage. That’s not really, that’s not limited to just auto insurance, but umbrella coverage, as you know, the name kind of insinuates, will protect you against any liability. So you know, if your dog gets out of the house and injures someone, it would protect you then, I mean, if you know, if you own a business and you’re a solo, if you’re the sole owner, and something would get passed through to you, that umbrella coverage would be there to kind of protect you in general. I mean, so umbrella coverage is important for that reason. And so in order to get an umbrella coverage, you know you have to have substantial underlying auto insurance. And so umbrella coverage usually is like in the million dollar range or more. And anyone that has umbrella coverage, again, they do not. They’re not required to offer underinsured, uninsured motorist coverage, and they’re not required to match whatever the umbrella coverage is, and so you’ll have to do some shopping. But if you have umbrella coverage again, that means you’re doing well in terms of protecting everyone else. If you, you know, are liable for something, but it’s important, especially at that level, to make sure that you’re protecting yourself. And so you know, you kind of have to shop with carriers, and sometimes carriers will change and stuff, but you want to add that uninsured coverage to your umbrella. I know, for example, there’s like a $3 million umbrella, the carrier will offer you a million and uninsured and so that’s important to kind of look as well if you have that coverage

Joey Loss  19:40

for sure that, yeah, I was going to bring that up later. One of the things I look at from the planning seat, you know, it’s important to acknowledge first, that I’m not the expert in the litigation of this or in coverage options, but what I do, think is my job and the job of financial planners, because we have such a great can. Continuous view into client lifestyles and situations is to just ring the bell and say, hey, you know, your income has risen a whole lot. You’ve got two properties now. You’ve got, I don’t even want to say the two properties thing, because I don’t think that has to be the trigger for an umbrella coverage. I think there’s a lot of good reasons to get it if you have one property. But I do think, you know, part of my job is to ring the bell and say, hey, you know, there’s a lot of assets that aren’t in retirement plans, which are protected from creditors. You know, you’ve got kind of a high liability solo shop going, or just a high liability profession in general. You drive a really nice car. You know that that can make you a target. There’s all sorts of things in someone’s situation that kind of raise the alarm. Of like, you know what? We should probably go ahead and get some extra coverage. And to your point about umbrella if you think about the dollars that are likely to be paid out if an event happens, and auto insurance coverage limits are much more likely to be hit. So naturally, those cost more per dollar of coverage. Umbrella coverage tends to be a lot less because it lays on top of your auto policy and your homeowner’s policy.

Rakin Hamad  21:09

Yeah, it’s really not. It’s really not that expensive for the amount of coverage that they’re giving. You make a great point. Yeah, it’s really

Joey Loss  21:17

not. And, you know, in a lot of situations here, I mean, that’s probably one of the most common first year things for a client that starts working with me is, you know, we’ll do the financial plan, and then we look at the insurance. I always ask them to send the declaration pages, and I’ll say, you know, an umbrella policy will cost maybe three to $400 a year, and it’s going to triple your liability coverage. And we can add more uninsured liability coverage there too. And if someone’s making three $400,000 a year, that uninsured piece just becomes more important. Because if you get hit by somebody that has no coverage, I mean, you’re just kind of out of luck as far as wages go. Yeah,

Rakin Hamad  21:51

absolutely. And the financial planning and what you do is, you know, you help people kind of increase their wealth and kind of keep taking steps forward. And when you get that coverage, then you make sure, though there’s there’ll be no steps back. And so that, to me, that you know that’s kind of the the purpose of it is to make sure whether you’ll be like, whether you’re liable, or whether you know someone like, I said, injures you, and kind of it takes away your ability to continue building wealth as you had. It’s important to make sure you have that floor, to make sure when you, you know, take a step forward, there’s no, you know, step back. And that’s how I see it. And again, you made a great point. It’s not you know you have to. It’s not like once you buy your second property or something you it triggers the need to have umbrella coverage. I mean, once you have a child, and that child could cause something or there’s several reasons why you should have umbrella coverage and warrants, you know, you are in the field of, kind of making, you know, enough money where you have disposable income and stuff like that. That’s kind of what triggers the need for an umbrella in my, you know, opinion, and you made a great point that the cost is minimal compared to what the potential gain is.

Joey Loss  23:05

Yeah, absolutely. And, and one footnote for transparency, if you have teenagers that are on the umbrella, it’s gonna definitely be more expensive. But there’s a reason for that, and that’s because it gets used, you know, and that’s better than money out of your pocket. Well,

Rakin Hamad  23:19

and again, you know, that kind of signals, you know, the rate will go up, because they know that the likelihood that they’ll have to pay on it goes up. So, you know, you can kind of look at it as like, Well, yeah, the cost will be a little bit more, but the chances that I have to, you know, pay something will go up, or the likelihood of the carrier paying will kind of go up,

Joey Loss  23:41

definitely. I’m wondering if you know, one of the things that I’m a big believer in is the power of stories. Because I think, you know, we’ve talked about some good points here. I think we’ve made the case, but stories might do a better job of bringing it home and making it stick in people’s minds. And what are some of the most interesting cases you’ve seen, that illustrate how this plays out.

Rakin Hamad  24:04

I can tell you, you know, from the business perspective, I did have a case against a salon, and there was an injury for a woman that was getting a hair treatment. And salons are kind of in that wild, wild west range where they’re not required to have insurance. And so it’s kind of 5050, if, you know, salons, ham insurance or not. So actually, I had to, I had two cases against, uh, like, we’ll call it a salon, or, you know, these, these places that will do, like laser hair removal and stuff like that. One had insurance and one didn’t. And on one of them, you know, the the insurance company took care of it. You know, it was a substantial claim to the person that was injured, and the insurance company you know, defended the claim, paid out on the claim. And the business you know kept running at. As as they had beforehand. The other claim where the business did not have insurance was much more difficult for the business. To be frank with you, they had to go hire an attorney, and that’s one thing to mention. I don’t know if people know this, but when you have auto insurance, or when you have insurance, liability insurance protecting you. They’re responsible for hiring the attorney, and so you’re not paying attorneys fees. You’re not you know, none of that’s coming out of the pocket. So that’s another kind of expense that the insurance coverage will take care of. And so this business that didn’t have insurance, they had to go and hire an attorney, and at the end of the day, I know the owner was writing a check, you know, out of her, out of her account, and so those are, and to be frank with you, the person that was injured didn’t wasn’t able to receive, you know, the full compensation for her injuries, because, you know, it wasn’t coming out of the insurance company. It was coming out of a business owner. So for a business perspective, you know, that’s kind of, and businesses are usually good in general, having insurance. But that’s, that’s a story that you can kind of see the two sides of the coin, of, you know, who was in a much better situation because they did, you know, protect themselves beforehand. So that would be one story, another story we had. This was just a normal kind of par crash, and the driver was wealthy, and for some reason, you know, they just didn’t have insurance coverage. And, and I can tell you from, you know, a lawyer’s perspective, or from someone that’s injured, you know, it’s easy to tell if someone has assets or not. I mean, just do a property search or do anything like that. So it’s not something that you’ll be able to hide down the road. And so that, you know, that person that didn’t have the insurance, you know, they caused a very substantial injury, and they were on the hook personally, where they’re taking money out of their bank account to kind of, you know, pay the claim. And so, like I said, obviously what you do, you help people kind of take two steps forward throughout their, you know, financial journey. And these are ways where someone will kind of, you know, drag them back or go backwards. And so obviously no one wants to take one step forward and two steps back. And these are just kind of real life examples of, you know, how you can protect yourself from going backwards? Yeah, and

Joey Loss  27:27

it’s interesting listening to those stories. You know, you listen to the story and you’re like, well, it just seems so obvious what they should have had in place. But when you’re leading up to it and you’re running a business or you’re running a household, right, things are expensive. Now, we had crazy inflation last few years, you can, I can understand why people would be looking for every opportunity to cut costs so they can do other things. And, you know, I guess this, this episode and this conversation is really the plea of, like, protect what you’ve built, because it’s really hard to get it back, you know. And it’s just the psychological impact is hard to really recover from, even after you’ve recovered financially, you know, it’s just gonna bother

Rakin Hamad  28:02

you absolutely. And I can tell you, everyone that I’ve been involved with that doesn’t have enough insurance coverage, and their, you know, personal account is, is, you know, kind of on the table. Almost immediately they buy insurance cover, they, you know, they increase their coverage. And, you know, nowadays the rates are rising, unfortunately. But take it from, you know, someone else’s experience where they have to pay out of pocket and they increase their coverage immediately. That that’s what you want to do, and you want to, you know, be proactive about it so you’re not kind of learning that mistake, you know, down the road.

Joey Loss  28:40

Yeah, that’s great. And, and just to shed a little more light for listeners on like, how I handle this with clients, you know, insurance is a is a huge tool as rack, and said it’s, it’s one of the three stool, three legs of the stool in his field. And there’s other tools that we have as well, but there’s, there’s limits on them, and none of them bring us to a point where we don’t need great insurance. The things that we can look at are like account titling. In Florida, for example, if you have a an account that is owned individually, and you own your car title individually, your insurance is in your name, and something happens when you’re driving the car that individual account, as I understand it from attorneys here, is exposed, meaning that if you don’t have enough insurance coverage, then that account can be considered as a pot of assets that can be claimed by the injured party. But if you’re married and you own all non retirement account assets in a joint account, and your cars are titled individually, then anything that happens as an individual liability event is much less likely to result in that joint account, which will be protected by tenants, by the entirety protections. It’s much less likely so that there are tools that we can do to help mitigate. Are the worst, worst, worst case. But even when we do those things, we’re still looking at, okay, we probably need umbrella liability coverage. If we’re at that point in the conversation, how much do we need? Maybe we can make it so we don’t need, like, 5 million, but there’s still going to be a need, right?

Rakin Hamad  30:17

And you’re absolutely right. I mean, in terms of assets that could be collected on or or, you know, we call it, could be touch any joint, you know, account with someone that wasn’t negligent, or wasn’t isn’t liable, can’t be touched. But you know, there have been situations where, for example, you know, it’s a husband and wife, and they own property together, and the question is, well, you know, you the husband owes this amount, and you know, maybe that property can’t be touched, but you know the husband, it can get a home equity loan and and from it, and to pay off what they would owe, instead of him having to be personally liable for it. And in those situations, I mean, you know, the spouses is, you know, usually going to say, Well, if the option is, you know, my husband goes into bankruptcy, or, or, you know, my spouse goes into bankruptcy. Or, you know, we take this home equity loan to kind of pay off what we have to the decision is usually, you know, pretty, pretty clear. So while there are kind of tools to limit what is touched at the end of the day. The best tool will always just be having enough insurance coverage to protect you. And like you said, I mean, for a personal, everyday individual, if you have a million in coverage, you’re doing extremely well, and you can feel protected. I mean, I’m not. You’re saying, you know, you need 5 million or anything like that. So I completely agree with what you’re saying,

Joey Loss  31:46

yeah, and, you know, one piece we didn’t talk about, it probably doesn’t need a ton of conversation, but that homeowners piece with a personal liability. You know, examples of when that could come into play, as I understand it, are like, you know, somebody’s at your house for a party, and they slip and they slip and fall and hit their head, right? Like you may say, I only have really good friends over at my house, and that it’s probably true. But the insurance company, you know, their medical insurance company, is not your friend, and they’re going to be asking what happened, because no insurance company wants to pay a claim that’s not theirs. Am I articulating that right as far as, like, how that would play out? Yeah,

Rakin Hamad  32:23

yeah. So homeowners coverage and renters insurance coverage, okay, those will protect you if you’re liable for, basically, you know, anything that is not involving a car or a motor vehicle, and a lot of people think it only protects you in your home or in the in the property where you bought the insurance. But, and to kind of back up, well, the cases that we see mostly with homeowners coverage are involved animals or dog attacks. So like, you have people over and, you know, a dog bite someone or or, you know, whatnot, inside your house. Okay, that’s protected through homeowners. But what people don’t know is, you know, let’s say you take your dog to a dog park or something, and there’s an attack there, you would still be protected through your homeowner coverage. And you know, dog bite cases, to be frank with you, the injuries are always, almost always, much worse than you would think. You know, if people are injured from from a dog, so those cases do have a lot of value in terms of what the injury is and what the the injured party is, is entitled to, and having you know that that homeowner’s coverage is important. So I think that’s the important part is that homeowners is not limited. You’re absolutely right. If someone slips and falls at your house or something, then you know you’re protected through homeowners. But if you know, like I said, your dog escapes the house and attacks someone, your homeowners would still protect you. If you’re on a wall and your dog attacks someone, your homeowners would still protect you. If you know, if you drop your water or something at a store and you don’t clean it up and someone slips and falls on it, your homeowners would protect you. So, you know, it’s kind of unique situations, I would say, other than the animal or dog attacks, but the homeowners extends further than the actual property, which I don’t think a lot of people know, yeah,

Joey Loss  34:26

and I mean, it just points to, you know, the reality in America is we live in a very litigious society, and even amongst friends. You know, if a personal injury claim like that arises at home, you know, a friend’s dog bitch, you or something, when the medical bills turn to 50, 60,000 you know, do you really want to find out how much the friendships worth through paying it out of pocket? Or, you know, are you going to let the insurance companies kind of deal with it and move on? You know that that’s really where that comes in. And the good news is, if you own a home, you have homeowners insurance. If you have renters, you have renters insurance. Hopefully. And the piece to look at is that personal liability coverage, which is, which is its own line item, separate from, you know, the physical protection of your house and things like that. And there is some option in terms of how much coverage to have, and if you don’t have enough, that’s always a separate policy you can get. And in Florida, where we have a very strange homeowner situation. You know, premiums are rising like crazy, and that has all to do with the dwelling coverage because of the storms. And as we record this, within 24 hours, we’ll be hit by another major hurricane. You know, it’s insurance carriers are getting weirder and weirder about including random pieces like personal liability. And so I’ve learned through that process that there are very creative ways to get that coverage, even if your homeowners isn’t giving you what you

Rakin Hamad  35:47

want. Yeah, yeah, that’s a good point. And yeah, like, I, you know, I’m not in Florida, but I, I’ve kind of heard of the, you know, changes that carriers or insurance carriers are are implementing down there in terms of just not offering coverage. So that’s good that you found out you already know about that, and can advise people on that. The other thing that I would say is like, you know, a lot of people will have renters and homeowners, and they don’t even know what it does. And so if you do have a friend that’s injured or something on your property, or, you know, because of you, and you feel bad, you can always let them know, Hey, I do have this coverage. And, you know, there is an avenue of recovery that’s not taking anything out of our our pockets, which, you know, and I think is important, because a lot of people just kind of, you know, forget about it and don’t know that they have it. It’s just something that goes out of their pocket every month, and they don’t think, well, I’m going to use this coverage, you know, at any point.

Joey Loss  36:47

Yeah, that’s a, that’s a very good point. Is there anything else top of mind that you think, like, you know, the layman listener should, should know about,

Rakin Hamad  36:56

Well, again, I would ask everyone to check their declarations page. It’s very important. There’s also a small on your auto going back to auto insurance, actually, in homeowners, they may offer it as well, but there’s something called medical benefits coverage, or med pay, or some states they call they call it Pip. And what that does is a very small amount of coverage. It’s usually like five grand or less, but it’s no fault coverage. So whether you’re at fault or someone else is at fault, it’s coverage that’ll apply, that’ll pay you or reimburse you for whatever medical expenses you pay, plus whatever your health insurance pays. And so the purpose of it is like, for example, if you’re injured, you go to the hospital or you haven’t paid your deductible, and you’re thinking about taking that out of your pocket if you have this medpay coverage or this PIP coverage, potentially you know that that coverage can reimburse you for it, so you’re not, you know, paying that, that deductible and that, again, that’s a additional coverage that you would have to add, But the cost of it is, is very minimal, and the benefit of it is, you know, it’s not as substantial as these other coverages, but you know it is. It is important. And people that do have it are usually, you know, very happy that they have it when they need to use it. So that’s another coverage that that’s another coverage I will look at. And again, it’s just important to make sure you look at your declarations page and you talk to someone that you either kind of educate yourself on, you know what coverage you have, where you talk to someone that can kind of advise you on? Well, this is what you have, and you’re protected, or you’re not, and you know to what to be. Yeah,

Joey Loss  38:36

that’s a great point. And in practical terms, like, as you described the PIP coverage, which I believe. So it’s called here, that’s personal injury protection. It’s, you know, a couple dollars every six months to basically protect your emergency fund. You know, do you want to throw $5,000 to that at a random event? Or, you know, pay $2 every six months to not have to pay it? Yeah,

Rakin Hamad  38:57

it’s very it’s a very small amount per month. So it’s, I have it, and I always recommending to clients to get it as well. The other thing is, you know, everyone that is I know you’re going to listen to us and go look at your declarations page, and you’re going to see, under the bodily injury coverage, you’ll see like 30 slash 60 or 50 slash 100 so just to kind of explain to you what that means, that first number means the limits that the carrier will pay per person. So let’s say you know you hit a car that has four people in it, the and you have a 30 slash 60 policy, which is not good coverage. You should increase it. But let’s say you have 30 slash 60. You hit a car with four people in it, the carrier will pay up to 30,000 per person. So the most that one person can get is 30,000 that second number, the 60,000 is the most that they’ll pay per occurrence or per crash. So if you crash in to a car with four people, the most they’ll pay combined for those four people is 60,000 so that’s what. Those two numbers mean. So you know, when you see that kind of slash and you’re wondering what it means, you know, that’s what it is. Yeah,

Joey Loss  40:07

thanks for pointing that out. Man, this has been awesome. There’s parts of this that, you know, I know, just from routine, but then parts of this that I just don’t have access to, because I’m not really dealing with the aftermath at all, and so I just appreciate your time and you’re sharing about it? Yeah, of course.

Rakin Hamad  40:23

And I really appreciate if you have me on and it’s important, these things are important. So I’m glad that you’re kind of putting this out here for your for your clients, and that sounds like you’re already kind of recommending to them, and so that that’s important, because we need other professionals that just lawyers kind of explaining the benefit of it before it’s too late. So again, I’m really glad that you had me on and I hope this helps a lot of people kind of understand what that monthly expense really is doing for them and can and how it can help them down the road.

Joey Loss  40:54

Absolutely, if people want to keep up with what you’re doing and writing, how can they do that? Yeah,

Rakin Hamad  40:59

you can check out our website. The name of my law firm is Curcio law, so it’s C, u, r, c, i, o, l, a, W, and so if you go to Curcio law.com we have a monthly newsletter that we send out that you know you can subscribe to. There’s also my email and contact information there. If anyone has any questions about their declarations page, or any coverage, or any you know, specific questions you know, feel free to shoot me an email and mention Joey Lawson, and I’ll respond, I promise. So that’s how you can reach me. And again, that’s Kirstie o law C, u, r, c, i, o, l, a, w.com, awesome

Joey Loss  41:39

for listeners, as always, I’ll put those links in the notes so you can get to them easily. Rakin, thanks again. Man, appreciate it.

Rakin Hamad  41:46

Have a good one. Stay safe.

Joey Loss  41:53

Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to the show and share the episode with friends or family that may find a conversation helpful or interesting. Show Notes and episode transcripts are available on my website at flow financial.com/podcast, I want to give a special thanks to Bo de leesons for the music explorer and to the podcast man for producing the show. We’ll see you next time

Disclaimer  42:17

the Wealth Unplugged Podcast is sponsored by flow financial Joey’s Registered Investment company offering Financial Planning and Investment Management services to clients across the United States. The opinions voiced in this material are for general informational purposes only, and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual security to determine which investments may be appropriate for you, consult your financial advisor prior to investing. This information is not intended to be a substitute for individualized tax advice. Please consult your tax advisor regarding your specific situation.